


into the dark

by neonheartbeat



Series: Filled Prompts [10]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Crying, F/M, Other, Rey Needs A Hug, Short One Shot, it is good boy sweater crying hour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-19
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:41:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22314997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neonheartbeat/pseuds/neonheartbeat
Summary: Filled prompt on twitter from @Dyad_InTheForce: "a fic where Rey cries into Ben's good boy sweater right before her visit to Tatooine"
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo
Series: Filled Prompts [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1138814
Comments: 29
Kudos: 65





	into the dark

Leaving the Resistance behind had been one of the hardest, and yet somehow the easiest things that Rey had ever done. With her knapsack in her hand and wearing clean clothes, fresh off Doctor Kalonia's bacta tank for her multiple bruises and injuries sustained during the fight on Exegol, she'd boarded the Falcon and waved goodbye cheerfully, smiling down at her friends as she'd left the surface and escaped the atmosphere of Ajan Kloss. 

Once out of reach, the mask crumbled away, and she sat down after setting the navcomputer to reach Tatooine, numbly staring into space. Meditation could have been an answer: an escape, a bacta patch on the sucking wound that her soul had become. Instead, she sat in silence, staring at the blank wall while her memory superimposed Ben Solo's face over the smooth interior of his father's ship. 

He had smiled for her. Somehow that hurt the most: he had smiled after her lips had left his, and she had thought for one glorious, shining moment that they would leave together, hand in hand, ready to start a new life away from the ghosts of the past. To let old things die. To love, and to live, and she had found her belonging at last, her _home,_ and then... the smile had slid off his face, giving way to a grey pallor, and before she had even had time to register what had happened he was dead at her feet, lying on the cold stone. She hadn't even been able to take his body home: he had evaporated before her eyes into nothingness, leaving behind his clothes: black knit shirt, trousers, boots. _It's not fair,_ she wailed out into the Force now, pulling her knees up to her chest. _Not fair! He was mine and he was good and he fought so hard..._ If only she had been able to say goodbye. If only she had been able to save his life. 

"Not good enough," Rey choked, hugging her knapsack to her chest. "I wasn't _good enough_." She had never been good enough, and would never be: a scion of the Emperor, something with darkness threatening to choke her from the inside out. It was in her blood, inextricably a part of who she was, and it would never be gone. She hadn't been good enough to save his life again.

Her hands dipped into the bag, fingers trembling, as they drew out the black shirt, still stinking of sweat and blood. There: the hole in the torso with edges smelling of char and melt, where she had run him through in rage: there was the rip at the shoulder, the unraveling threads at the neckline. Rey buried her face in the fabric and inhaled deeply, and she could still smell him: musk, leather. She could sense the Force-echoes clinging to the thing, too; echoes of cool decision, desperation, grief, loss, happiness so strong that she could almost taste it, and over it all was _love_ : he had loved her and grieved her dead body in the ash and dust of Exegol, he had loved her and come to her when she needed him most. 

Tears began to well up in her eyes, tears she had forced away and staved off for so long, but they could not be stopped, not now. "Ben," she choked aloud, and buried her face in the shirt, clinging to it like she'd never let it go as her body rocked with sobs. She reached out into the Force, desperate for any answer: hadn't Maz told her that Leia had become one with the Force and her body gone, too? Was he still out there somewhere, in the Force? Could he hear her? Was there any hope? "Ben. Be with me. _Be_ with me. Please." He had told her once she wasn't alone, that he was there: was he still there, or was she truly by herself? "Be with me, Ben. Be with me."

But there was no answer from the Force, nothing but silence and her own grief as Rey clutched Ben Solo's empty clothing to her breast and cried, alone, as if her heart would break. 


End file.
